1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to network connections and, more particularly, to controlling characteristics of network connections.
2. Description of the Related Art
A wireless network is often used to transmit messages from an origin location in a network to a destination location in the network. The network that the wireless network is coupled to often includes many servers that store various kinds of information. These messages contain data to be supplied to the destination location. Often the messages are requests for information from the destination location. In other cases the messages are responses to requests for information from a source location. In still other cases the messages are notification messages that are sent to the destination location without any specific request. The wireless network typically includes various mobile devices and multiple underlying bearer networks to support the connections between the mobile devices and the network.
Mobile devices are provisioned (i.e., configured) to operate in specific ways. The provisioning can be preset in the mobile phone, can be performed by a user, or more often can be performed over the air when the mobile device connects to the wireless network. The provisioning of a mobile device determines how various basic functions of the mobile device will operate. Typically, a mobile device has a set of local services that provides the basic functions of the mobile device. Examples of such basic functions include setting or updating wireless voice and data protocol parameters, address books, and various other parameters that can be used to enable or disable certain telephony and data features of the mobile devices.
Conventionally, through provisioning or manufacturing of mobile devices, a fixed set of rules control how connections are made between a mobile device and a network (e.g., bearer network and protocol stack). Despite the fixed set of connection rules, quality of service could be altered in a limited sense by configuring protocol stacks with different parameters (e.g., re-transmission timers and circuit linger timers). See Handheld Device Transport Protocol (HDTP). Quality of service has been able to be configured by specialized Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which must have detailed knowledge of the communication system, see e.g., Microsoft's Windows Telephony API).
One problem with conventional approaches to establishing connections between a mobile device and a network is that they provide only limited configurability to network connections. As a result, the extent to which quality of service is able to be conventionally controlled is severely limited. Other problems with the conventional approaches are that the conventional approaches do not operate on a per-application basis or do not enable a network operator to control configuration of network connections. In addition, the conventional approaches do not operate in a flexible and controllable way.
Thus, there is a need for improved ways to control network connections and thus quality of service for devices connecting to a network.